Donald Edward Keyhoe (June 20, 1897 – November 29, 1988) was an American Marine Corps naval aviator, writer of aviation articles and stories in a variety of publications, and tour manager of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.
In the 1950s, Keyhoe became a UFO researcher and writer, arguing that the U.S. government should conduct research into UFO matters, and should publicly release all its UFO files.
Early life and career
Keyhoe was born and raised in Ottumwa, Iowa. Upon receiving his B.S. degree from the United States Naval Academy in 1919, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.
In 1922, his arm was injured during an airplane crash in Guam. During his long convalescence, Keyhoe began writing as a hobby. He eventually returned to active duty, but the injury gave Keyhoe persistent trouble, and, as a result, he resigned from the Marines in 1923. He then worked for the National Geodetic Survey and U.S. Department of Commerce.
In 1927, Keyhoe managed a coast-to-coast tour by Charles Lindbergh. This led to Keyhoe's first book, 1928's Flying With Lindbergh. The book was a success, and led to a freelance writing career, with Keyhoe's articles and fictional stories (mostly related to aviation) appearing in a variety of publications.
Keyhoe returned to active duty during World War II in a Naval Aviation Training Division before retiring again at the rank of major.
Writing for the pulps and glossies
By the time his UFO books appeared, Keyhoe was already an established author, with stories in the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Four of his short stories were printed in Weird Tales: "The Grim Passenger" (1925), "The Mystery Under the Sea" (1926), "Through the Vortex" (1926) and "The Master of Doom" (1927). He also produced the lead novel for all three issues of a short-lived magazine Dr. Yen Sin: "The Mystery of the Dragon's Shadow" (May/June 1936), "The Mystery of the Golden Skull" (July/August 1936) and "The Mystery of the Singing Mummies" (September/October 1936). The Doctor was opposed by a hero who could not sleep.
Keyhoe wrote a number of air adventure stories for Flying Aces, and other magazines, and created two larger-than-life superheroes in this genre. The first of these was Captain Philip Strange, referred to as "the Brain Devil" and "the Phantom Ace of G-2." Captain Strange was an American intelligence officer during World War I who was gifted with ESP and other mental powers. His existence has been perpetuated beyond Keyhoe's stories as a minor member of the Wold Newton universe.
Keyhoe's other "superpowered" flying ace was Richard Knight, a World War I veteran who was blinded in combat but gained a supernatural ability to see in the dark. Knight featured in 35 adventure stories from 1936 to 1942.
Other series he wrote included the "Eric Trent" series in Flying Aces and the "Vanished Legion" in Dare-Devil Aces, and two long-running series: "The Devildog Squadron" in Sky Birds and "The Jailbird Flight" in Battle Aces.
Many of Keyhoe's stories for the pulps were science fiction or Weird Fantasy, or contained a significant measure of these elements — a fact that was not lost on later critics of his UFO books.
He was also a freelancer for Saturday Evening Post, The Nation, and Reader's Digest.
The Flying Saucers Are Real
Interest in UFO's broke out across the United States following pilot Kenneth Arnold's report of odd, fast-moving aerial objects in Washington State during the summer of 1947. Keyhoe began to follow the subject with some interest, though he was initially skeptical of any extraordinary answer to the UFO question. For some time, True (a popular American men's magazine) had been inquiring of officials as to the flying saucer question, with little to show for their efforts. In the spring of 1949, after the U.S. Air Force had released contradictory information about the saucers, editor Ken Purdy turned to Keyhoe, who had written for the magazine, but who also had friends and contacts in the military and the Pentagon.
As their forms, flight maneuvers, speeds and light technology was apparently far ahead of any nation's developments, Keyhoe became convinced that they must be the products of unearthly intelligences, and that the U.S. government was trying to suppress the whole truth about the subject. This conclusion was based especially on the response Keyhoe found when he quizzed various officials about flying saucers. He was told there was nothing to the subject, yet was simultaneously denied access to saucer-related documents.